By Melinda Young

Both the war on drugs and anti-abortion laws facilitate economic exploitation of marginalized communities, and healthcare providers also are at risk of legal repercussions and/or of having their patients’ medical data used to support criminal investigations, a new paper says.¹ The overlap of the anti-drug and anti-abortion laws is exemplified in Louisiana, which recently reclassified mifepristone and misoprostol — the abortion-inducing medications — as “controlled and dangerous substances.”¹

“We link Louisiana’s policies to the war on drugs through the use of moral panics and the blatant disregard for scientific evidence and medical opinion,” says Maryanne Diaz, PhD, a lecturer in the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Emergency Management at California State University, Long Beach. Diaz answered questions via email.

“With the war on drugs, we have had decades of policies based on moral panic rather than scientific evidence,” Diaz says. “Alcohol, which is one of the most harmful substances, is not scheduled by the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency], but cannabis, which is significantly less harmful, is schedule I.”

Although drug policy research consistently suggests there needs to be harm reduction and increased treatment rather than punitive enforcement, there continues to be increased enforcement, she adds. “Louisiana’s policies and similar abortion criminalization policies across the country mirror this process,” she says.

“The medical community supports the use of mifepristone and misoprostol for abortion care,” Diaz adds. “These medications also assist with expediting miscarriage care. However, based on moral panics and fear mongering around babies and children, states are criminalizing this care.”

Research has shown that criminalizing abortion generally increases morbidity and mortality for pregnant women and does not decrease abortions. Recent evidence of abortions in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned women’s right to an abortion established in Roe v. Wade, shows that overall abortions increased slightly after Dobbs.^2,3 Prior to the Dobbs ruling, abortion volume had been declining nationally.²

“Just like with the war on drugs, legislatures are ignoring the science to pass policies that are only going to exacerbate harm and even death,” Diaz says. “If more states adopt these policies, we are going to see an increase in harm and mortality,” she adds. “Following what has happened with the war on drugs, we are also likely to see these harms concentrated in communities of color, rural communities, and low-income communities.”

The war on drugs has continued a system of racial caste in the United States, and anti-abortion laws are doing the same, she notes.

“People with privilege and economic power will be able to seek safe and legal abortions by traveling to states where abortion is legal,” Diaz says. “Those who cannot are going to bear the brunt of the criminalization, which is what we are already beginning to see.”

A recent example is of a 20-year-old South Carolina woman named Jocelyn Byrum, who was arrested and charged with attempted murder and unlawful neglect of a child after taking abortion medication. She was 27 weeks pregnant and told police she had taken medication to induce labor and end her pregnancy. She was denied bond, and the newborn was revived by emergency responders and taken to the hospital.⁴ A woman with economic means could have driven or flown to one of the 10 states that would have provided her with a legal means to end her pregnancy before the pregnancy progressed to 27 weeks.⁵

There have been similar cases in South Carolina and other states, where women have been charged with murder after a miscarriage or abortion. Another example is of South Carolina college student Amari Marsh, who had a pregnancy loss. She experienced a miscarriage in the second trimester and gave birth over a toilet in her apartment. She had passed out and ended up in the hospital, visited quickly by law enforcement. She was charged with murder/homicide by child abuse and spent 22 days in jail without bond and faced 20 years to life in prison. She was cleared by a grand jury 13 months later.⁶

A 2023 report by Pregnancy Justice, an advocacy group, found that pregnant women are vulnerable to criminal charges by virtue of being pregnant. South Carolina, Alabama, and Oklahoma have the highest number of prosecutions of pregnant women.⁷ These pregnancy-related arrests are concentrated in the South, and more than three-quarters involve low-income individuals. They include a disproportionate number of Indigenous people, and they involve law enforcement sending women to prison even in cases where it is unclear they harmed their unborn child.⁷

The vast majority of cases involved substance use during pregnancy, and for more than half of cases, substance use was the only allegation made.⁷ In more than half of the cases, clinicians and other healthcare professionals were involved in reporting the patients and/or supporting criminal prosecution with patients’ medical information.⁷

Arrests related to pregnancy have increased since the Dobbs decision, and new state laws are making arrests more likely whenever someone has a poor outcome in pregnancy or whenever hospitals test them for substance use even when the infant is healthy, data show.⁸ This increase in criminalization, largely related to drug use, comes at a time when policymakers are becoming more aware of solutions to the drug crisis that do not involve law enforcement.

“The opioid epidemic has started to shift drug policy toward harm reduction and treatment,” Diaz says. “While drug use is still heavily criminalized, even in states like California where I live, we are seeing a broader acceptance of harm reduction, treatment, and decriminalization efforts.”

There are commercials for Narcan and drug treatment — a cultural shift from the crack epidemic of the 1980s, when crack addiction was treated solely as a criminal matter. “We never would have seen these commercials during the crack epidemic,” she says.

Early analyses of this new wave of abortion criminalization suggest the United States is experiencing a new system of injustice toward people who lack economic and racial privilege, and it is sweeping up pregnant people as well as anyone who helps them.¹ For example, anyone in Idaho who helps someone younger than age 18 years obtain an abortion — even with parental consent — is committing abortion trafficking, a term that is directly drawn from drug war rhetoric.¹ Laws that provide bounties for people who report anyone distributing abortion medication are similar to the drug war’s civil asset forfeiture, Diaz says.

“As argued in our article, these policies will only exacerbate harms experienced among these groups,” she adds. “Additionally, these harms will be concentrated among communities who are most disenfranchised and can most benefit from bounties,” Diaz says. “Just like with the war on drugs, we argue the importance of following medical guidelines and scientific evidence when making decisions about reproductive policies.”

Melinda Young has been a healthcare and medical writer for 30 years. She currently writes about contraceptive technology.

References

1. Diaz MA, Perrone D. The war on drugs is a war on women: Louisiana’s abortion law. Intl J Drug Policy. 2025;140:104804:1-4.

2. Diep K, Sanchez BC, Ranji U, Salganicoff A. Abortion trends before and after Dobbs. KFF. July 15, 2025. https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/abortion-trends-before-and-after-dobbs/

3. Presser L, Suozzo A, Chou S, Surana K. Texas banned abortion. Then sepsis rates soared. ProPublica.org. Feb. 20, 2025. https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-abortion-ban-sepsis-maternal-mortality-analysis

4. Keane I. South Carolina woman charged with attempted murder after trying to terminate her pregnancy. Independent. Nov. 20, 2025. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/south-carolina-murder-charge-abortion-b2869131.html

5. Late-term Abortion Laws by State 2025. World Population Review. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/late-term-abortion-laws-by-state

6. Sausser L. She was accused of murder after losing her pregnancy. SC woman now tells her story. CNN Health. Sept. 23, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/23/health/south-carolina-abortion-kff-health-news-partner

7. Post-Dobbs Pregnancy Criminal Cases. Pregnancy Justice. https://www.pregnancyjusticeus.org/post-dobbs-pregnancy-criminalization/

8. McPhillips D. Post-Roe, pregnant women face growing risk of criminal prosecution for charges much broader than abortion. CNN Health. Sept. 24, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/24/health/criminal-charges-during-pregnancy-increase/